The New Code of Leadership : Four Strategic Shifts

Piloting thru the COVID era means grasping sudden strategic shifts. Social distancing and process turmoil have taken hold in every aspect of our lives, forcing us to change our routines and reevaluate our goals and expectations in real-time. And, unsurprisingly, these waves of upheaval have triggered a reset on most business operations and on commercial assumptions. We are all resetting the playbook in the new normal.

We are faced with an unprecedented challenge during this disruption. For years leaders have been told that if they are unable to lead ourselves, they cannot possibly lead others. But what does that look like right now? It is a struggle to process this globally shared experience that is simultaneously isolating and deeply personal. In a time when we need to be connected and certain, we may feel disconnected and unsure. On top of that, theory and practice are in constant collision. Navigating the unknowable and uncontrollable future of our businesses is no longer some academic or design-thinking challenge, it is reality. The future is no longer distant, it is right here right now. Hemingway captured this contradiction brilliantly in The Sun Also Rises: When a character is asked, “How did you go bankrupt?” the response is, Gradually and then suddenly.” 

Seeking command and control during this time of next-level upheaval simply will not work. Instead, we must cultivate ingenious mindset. Ingenious leaders are operators and innovators at the same time, and they encourage their followers to be the same. This style of leadership does not come naturally to everyone, but learning to master it is crucial to growth, and it must be prioritized and reactivated in the COVID era. Many corporate leaders are expert operators who drive efficiency and optimization, but not high on innovation and growth. Becoming an ingenious leader requires nurturing new ideas that address consumer pain points using the mindset and tools of a creator. Especially now, in this frightening and fluid new world, business leaders must learn to operate and create. So what is the first step toward being an ingenious leader? How do we elevate ourselves and our teams in this moment? 

Reset

Reset is not surrendering. Reset means embracing The New Normal as our shared reality, not a temporary dilemma to be endured, eventually returning to past goals and expectations. Reset is a crucial element of thoughtful agility. It empowers a team to set down the past, and move forward, unrestrained, into the future. It draws a circle around the knowable that helps us to identify the unknowable, giving us clarity on what we can control and what is beyond our control. Without that clarity, we are unable to set a path into the future. With that clarity, business leaders can make decisions based on new commercial truths, react and pivot quickly, reactivate and discover new growth, and lead their teams with conviction. They can become truly ingenious. Pressing the Reset button also requires us to acknowledge that past precedent is no longer a future predictor of business behaviors and outcomes. Leaders must have flexible mindsets around beliefs about market and consumer signals and shifts. It’s time to let go of past commitments and re-align our enterprises to a new-base business reality. 

Realign

?Once we have activated the Reset button, business leaders must prepare to realign and embrace the New Normal . This is where we practice ingenious leadership by shifting focus away from the knowable and controllable and toward the unknowable and uncontrollable. This is where we embrace discomfort and dig into the challenge of transforming our enterprises in two key areas: growth and capability.

Resurrect

To resurrect growth, we will need to innovate into radically changed markets to address new, often sudden strategic shifts in customer needs and problems. We are living in a fragile moment of intense change that requires us to lean into these rare opportunities to discover The New Future. Enterprises must abandon the familiar model of Total Addressable Markets (TAM), where past budgets and behaviors existed pre-disruption. We must shift now to a Total Addressable Problem (TAP) view of the world, where new needs, behaviors, and budgets guide our choices. Leaders should be experimenting and testing ferociously to understand the new TAP view of the world and dig into the problems that people are facing right now. Instead of thinking about the past, leaders must focus on present problems their enterprises are uniquely positioned to solve. 

Run better , Run different

To transform enterprises’ ability to resurrect growth, we will need to adopt and embed new strategies that transform teams and organizations with adaptability and speed to run better & run different. Leaders must cultivate resilience of growth in both capability and culture. Tackling all of this during the COVID era takes empathy and courage. Fortunately, we can see courage, innovation, and exploration all around us. Organizations and individuals are creating ingenious solutions to problems we never knew we would face. Futurologist, Yuval Noah Harari pointed out that we’re currently witnessing “… social experiments on a massive scale that will change the world. We can't predict what will happen because the main thing is that we have so many choices. It's not like there is just one predetermined outcome to this epidemic. “The choice we face means dual objective of augmenting the growth post recovery and finding new spots of opportunities. This gives us the opportunity to create growth mindsets, systems, and cultures that transcend traditional strategic planning and efficiency. We can embrace resilience and the capabilities to lead through uncertainty, and rise to meet the New Normal in the leadership code